Getting to Know God

THROUGH THE POWER OF PRAYER

When we first enter a walk with God it is natural that we don’t know what prayer is much less how to pray. Preachers give their best sermons on the subject of prayer. Authors write books about their experiences and sell it as the true way to pray. We read the scriptures to see what they have to say about the subject. And in the end, when we put the books and sermons on the shelf, we come to the place of making prayer a very personal and deliberate journey to our own communion with God and that can’t be taught by anyone.

While universal law has a lot to do with what many call prayer, there is a place within the heart of God that gives us our greatest joy; the place where the divinity within us communes with the divine of all creation. When pure honesty is exchanged from our heart to his, a powerful essence fills our being and we can sense the presence of the most-high. There is nothing like it, has never been, nor ever will be outside of this secret and personal place. It is transformational.

There’s something inside all of uswhether knowingly or subconsciously that reaches for a connection with something greater than ourselves. Alcoholics Anonymous calls it a “Higher Power”. New thought people call it “the Universe”. Other faith religions call it “God”. I call it “Christ” (Colossians 1:27 Christ in us the hope of Glory). Whatever you want to call the source of our existence, life tends to box us in and creates a funnel for us to slip through to the place of connecting with our divine source.

In the Kings James Version of the bible there are 107 scriptures on the word prayer, 306 on the word pray, 14 on meditate, and 8 on commune. That gives us ample references in which to explore and learn what the big deal is about prayer. In these scriptures we will find different usages for prayer such as:

When you pray go to your prayer closet. (Matt: 6:6)Make your petitions known to God. (I John 5:15)What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. (Mark 11:24)Ask and ye shall receive, seek and ye shall find, knock and the door will be opened to you. (John 16:24)

This journal is a bit different from all of the many books and journals written about how to pray. If you use it faithfully I believe it will help you on your journey. It is simply a means by which you can record your conversations, requests, petitions, and the like with God and then write down what you discovered based on the meetings you had with your Creator. Telling you how to pray is not the intent — guiding you into your own discovery and relationship is.

In my own journey with prayer there have been many discoveries. Simply talking with God about what’s on my heart has been the greatest. I can almost instantly feel what the response to my open and honest conversation with my source is when I approach our relationship from this posture. Prayer is meant to be relational, not mechanical, although it may start out that way.

What inspired this book?

Faith is a journey of growth. With that growth comes new trials to overcome. A few years ago a challenge came to me that was beyond my ability to handle, so I found it necessary to go back and remember how God had met me before. That was my aha moment. We all need a prayer journal to record our prayers and the answers to those prayers. Then, we can indeed go back and remember that God didn't let us down before, so why would He let us down now? Fact is, He won't!